a very lazy christmas

We had the loveliest, laziest Christmas! Did you know that Germany celebrates two days of Christmas? After Heilige Abend (Christmas Eve) comes the First Christmas Day (December 25th) then the Second Christmas Day (December 26th).

What did we do? Well, I got a nasty cold, so I was never much in the mood for anything but laying on the couch and playing short board games and Karl was happy to be home from work so loved the opportunity not to have any responsibilites and do nothing. So that's what we did. In between we ate a lot of good food and watched a lot of movies.

We ate:

1. Flammkuchen: we had our yummy, simple meal of Flammkuchen on Christmas Eve.

2. breakfast burritos: this is a Christmas morning tradition that comes from my Texas upbringing. As we talked to all my family members on the phone on Christmas, they were all preparing their own breakfast burritos!

3. mustard chicken with parmasean potatoes and bruschetta: this is a meal my husband made one Valentines' day several years ago and is one of my favorites so we had it on the 25th. The potatoes are one of our favorite lazy Sunday meals.

4. grilled roast with baked beans: Karl loves to grill, so he came up with this amazing marinated roast grilled on our balcony with homemade baked beans on the 26th. We had our leftover parmesean potatoes with it, too.

5. hot lemon and honey tea: for my cold.

We watched:

1. A Christmas Story: Classic!

2. Pitch Black: I hate Vin Diesel, but I really like this film. I watched it again so I could watch it's sequel for the first time.

3. The Riddick Chronicles: the Pitch Black sequel. It was ok and, of course, visially interesting which I like in films., but not as good as the Pitch Black. But I really like how it ended...very ambiguous, and you're not really sure if the Vin Deisel character really won or not.

4. The Office Special: the original British version. It's a Christmas special, so it was fitting to the holiday!

5. Spiderman 3: we always watch a Christmas movie on Christmas Eve, Albert Finney's Scrooge, but it's in storage in America, so we watched this because I hadn't seen it yet. I had heard a lot of bad things about it, but I rather liked it.

6. Holiday Inn: I adore this movie! Great Christmas movie...and the first performance of the Irving Berlin song "White Christmas". I especially love Fred Astaire's fireworks dance!

7. Elizabeth: The Golden Age: we always go to the theater to see a movie on Christmas day. So, on the 25th we drove into France and saw this...it just came out here in Europe. (we saw it in English with French subtitles...it's easier to find films in their original languages played in France...Germany tends to dub over much more often). We loved it! I like the exploration of the director of the choice Elizabeth I made to be a virgin queen. I think the first filmed explored why she made that choice, and this one explored the price she paid in making that choice.

8. Star Wars IV: A New Hope: We watched this both with and without the the commentary. Have you ever listened to the commentary? Really interesteding!

9. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back: Again, both with and without commentary. Have you ever read Chuck Klosterman's book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs? There's a chapter in it called "Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth" about how this movie laid the foundation of Generation X who all saw it in the theaters as young children and how Luke Skywalker was the original Gen Xer. I highly recommend reading it if you were a twenty-something in the nineties. It's a middle film of the trilogy, ending on a depressing note, and for many of us Gen Xers, it was one of the first films we saw in the theater and had a great impact on our young minds. He has some good points.

Well that was our Christmas...good food, good flicks, and togetherness!



(Image from CabaretVoltaire.)